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Sadhana : the realisation of life by Rabindranath Tagore
page 43 of 128 (33%)
man can never take them seriously. Their pessimism is a mere
pose, either intellectual or sentimental; but life itself is
optimistic: it wants to go on. Pessimism is a form of mental
dipsomania, it disdains healthy nourishment, indulges in the
strong drink of denunciation, and creates an artificial dejection
which thirsts for a stronger draught. If existence were an evil,
it would wait for no philosopher to prove it. It is like
convicting a man of suicide, while all the time he stands before
you in the flesh. Existence itself is here to prove that it
cannot be an evil.

An imperfection which is not all imperfection, but which has
perfection for its ideal, must go through a perpetual
realisation. Thus, it is the function of our intellect to
realise the truth through untruths, and knowledge is nothing but
the continually burning up of error to set free the light of
truth. Our will, our character, has to attain perfection by
continually overcoming evils, either inside or outside us, or
both; our physical life is consuming bodily materials every
moment to maintain the life fire; and our moral life too has its
fuel to burn. This life process is going on--we know it, we have
felt it; and we have a faith which no individual instances to the
contrary can shake, that the direction of humanity is from evil
to good. For we feel that good is the positive element in man's
nature, and in every age and every clime what man values most is
his ideals of goodness. We have known the good, we have loved
it, and we have paid our highest reverence to men who have shown
in their lives what goodness is.

The question will be asked, What is goodness; what does our moral
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